Second Honeymoon

Chapter 77

ALL OF A SUDDEN, Sarah was calling out again, only her call wasn’t aimed at me.

“Don’t move!” I heard her yell.

I immediately reached for my shin holster and raced out of the room, flying down the stairs. Landing with a thud in the foyer, I saw him from behind, his hands up. Sinclair? Really? No, it couldn’t be!

Instinctively, he turned around at the sound of me, his eyes popping wide with terror as he realized his predicament. Sarah was in front of him; I was at his back.

“Who are you?” demanded Sarah.

He turned to face her. Every nervous word tripped over his tongue. “I’m…uh, I’m…my name is Dr. Bruce Drummond. I’m…um, a psychiatrist.”

“Why are you here?” she asked—no, demanded.

“The news,” he said. “When I…uh…got home from work, I saw it on the news.”

Sarah and I both lowered our guns at the same time. Just like that, we’d already filled in the blanks.

“You treated Ned Sinclair?” she asked.

“Yes, for a year,” he answered, breathing for the first time. “Are you the police? I hope you’re the police.”

“FBI,” she said, flashing her badge. “I’m Agent Sarah Brubaker and that’s my partner, John.”

Cleverly, she avoided saying my last name. That would’ve surely confused the already shaky psychiatrist. As it was, he had more pressing concerns.

“Can I put my hands down now?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Sarah. “In fact, you can do a heck of a lot more than that. You can help us.”

We walked into Ned’s living room, where the theme of “sparsely furnished” had been carried even further. There was one couch, one armchair. That was it. The idea of a coffee table had apparently been deemed superfluous.

Not that we were offering Dr. Bruce Drummond any coffee. No drinks or hors d’oeuvres, either. Ixnay on the cocktail weenies, too—all we wanted to do was pump him for information.

“To start with, why are you here?” asked Sarah. “Have you been in contact with Ned?”

“Not for a couple of years,” he explained. “On the off chance that he was here, though, I was hoping to get him to surrender. The door was open when I arrived.”

“You didn’t think of first going to the police?” I asked.

Drummond folded his legs. “Ned never would have surrendered to the police,” he said matter-of-factly. He was calmer now, more composed; his scholarly aura began to assert itself.

Sarah clearly picked up on this and softened her tone. Smart cookie: she wanted to make Drummond feel appreciated for what he’d been trying to do. That was the best way to get him to open up about Ned.

“It’s understandable you would care about his well-being,” she said. “How long ago were you his psychiatrist?”

“He became my patient about five years ago, right after his sister was killed. The chair of the math department at UCLA, a friend of mine, had suggested that Ned see me.”

“For grief counseling?” I asked. I certainly had a little experience in that area.

“Yes, he was very close with his sister,” said Drummond. Then he tacked on something under his breath, almost by accident. “Too close.”

If there was ever a line that begged for a follow-up question, that was it. “What does that mean?” I asked.

Drummond hesitated. “Have you seen Ned’s personnel file from the university? Do you know why he left?”

“Yes,” said Sarah. “It said he was fired based on consistently poor student feedback.”

“That figures,” said Drummond. “It would’ve been a PR nightmare otherwise.”

“What would have?” I asked.

“The truth,” he said.